A PhD degree does generally prove expertise in whatever the subject of your dissertation was and provides access to a couple of networks. Not always guaranteed, but if someone has a PhD I generally expect that they are at least competent at whatever their dissertation was about. And I've only been burned once.
The value of the expertise & set of networks, though, can range from "extraordinarily valuable" to "worse than useless".
In STEM fields the expertise & network is usually at least good enough to keep you busy with decent-paying work for a career or so.
In CS it's usually good enough to get you either a 100K job with lots of freedom or a regular old 300K job at a big tech. So, not really worth doing if your goal is just maxing out lifetime earnings, but certainly there are worse outcomes. From there you're on your own, though.
Heh.
A PhD degree does generally prove expertise in whatever the subject of your dissertation was and provides access to a couple of networks. Not always guaranteed, but if someone has a PhD I generally expect that they are at least competent at whatever their dissertation was about. And I've only been burned once.
The value of the expertise & set of networks, though, can range from "extraordinarily valuable" to "worse than useless".
In STEM fields the expertise & network is usually at least good enough to keep you busy with decent-paying work for a career or so.
In CS it's usually good enough to get you either a 100K job with lots of freedom or a regular old 300K job at a big tech. So, not really worth doing if your goal is just maxing out lifetime earnings, but certainly there are worse outcomes. From there you're on your own, though.
In many of the humanities... not so much.